CPN is designed and maintained by ONline @ UW: Electronic Publishing Group.

Topics: Community

The Neighborhood Works

Special Issue on the
Empowerment Zone/Enterprise Community Program

Vol. 20, No. 1. Jan/Feb 1997. Copyright © 1997 by the Center for Neighborhood Technology. All rights reserved. Issue reprinted with permission.

Index

Editor's Note:A Work in Progress
Introduction: Open for Business
Services: Juggling Act
Economic Growth: Innovative Job Creation
Governance: Who Calls the Shots?
Case Study: Opportunity Lost
Environment: Growing Green Projects in Urban Zones
Profiles: All Over the Map

Contents

Editor's Note:A Work in Progress

Introduction: Open for Business
The EZ/EC program has been refined, but it needs work.
By Carl Vogel

Services: Juggling Act
Zone officials are working to provide human services and also create jobs.
By Camille Colatosti

Economic Growth: Innovative Job Creation
Ideas to bring in resources from across the zone.
By Lora Engdahl

Governance: Who Calls the Shots?
Despite a trend toward city hall control, some communities have mangaged to make their voices heard. By Paul Cuadros

Case Study: Opportunity Lost
Grassroots enthusiasm for Chicago's zone is nearly gone.
By Ben Joravsky

Environment: Growing Green Projects in Urban Zones
Ecologically sound EZ/EC projects are taking root.
By Linda Lutton

Editor's Note: A Work in Progress

Finally, as the devolution of programs to the state level picks up steam, the federal government has a responsibility to set standards as well as write checks. In EZ/ECs with a local government that is unresponsive to the neighborhoods, federal oversight is the surest way to ensure communities a voice at the table. The feds have left zones with an extraordinary amount of control, but they also need to hold local power structures accountable to the standard of true empowerment.

Introduction: Open for Business

The EZ/EC program has been refined, but it still needs work
by Carl Vogel

The first big push for Empowerment Zones came from Jack Kemp. As Secretary for Housing and Urban Development under Ronald Reagan, Kemp proposed targeting sections of low-income communities with tax incentives to entice businesses to set up shop. But during the Reagan/Bush years, the idea— then called Enterprise Zones— was never taken up by the federal government.

Yet as Washington kept talking about Enterprise Zones, more and more cities and states started their own, partly to have projects up and running when the federal money began to flow. By 1989, 38 states had some type of Enterprise Zone policy at the state or local level, more than 800 programs in all, says Richard Cowden, executive director of the American Association of Enterprise Zones.

"When our group was formed [in 1985] Enterprise Zones were just state and local tax incentives," Cowden says. "Little by little, with experimentation, people realized tax incentives alone do not work. . . . Good planners and administrators said, 'What we have here is a bulls-eye. Let's see how much we can hit it with,' and they began adding day care, crime programs, small-business incubators, job training, tax-exempt bond financing."

In 1993, President Clinton revived the Enterprise Zone concept, which already had bipartisan support. Now named Empowerment Zones and Enterprise Communities and part of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993, Clinton's program created slots for nine EZs, which would get the lion's share of the money and attention, and 95 ECs. The program followed the grassroots tinkering, bringing more than just tax credits to communities:

• The six urban EZs receive $100 million in direct federal funds over 10 years; the three rural EZs receive $40 million; and ECs receive $3 million. This money, in the form of Health and Human Services Title XX grants, can be spent at the zone's discretion, anything from health care facilities to new roads.
  
• Businesses in EZs are eligible for employee wage credits. For every zone resident the company employs, it can deduct from its tax bill up to 20 percent of that person's first $15,000 of salary or training expenses.
  
• Tax-exempt bond financing is available at low rates for EZs and ECs to help finance business property renovations or expansions.
  
• The Community Empowerment Board— the federal department designed to assist EZ/ECs— includes staff from every major domestic Cabinet agency and informally coordinates multi-agency programs. EZ/ECs can receive special preference for these and other programs, everything from crime prevention dollars to youth tax credits.

There were additional changes to the Kemp plan, as well. Experience in community development suggested that without citizen involvement and support, "top-down" programs were doomed— so communities had to build a strategic plan with input from a variety of players: residents, local businesses, government representatives, community-based organizations. These plans were to have a vision for more than just jobs; comprehensive, community-driven solutions to economic, physical, environmental, community and human development issues also were required.

These strategic plans were the applications for EZ/EC status. More than 500 communities applied, and in December 1994 the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, which administers the urban areas, and the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, the rural administrator, selected 11 EZs and 95 ECs. Cleveland and Los Angeles were added as Supplemental Empowerment Zones, with some, but not all the benefits of being an EZ. And Boston, Houston, Kansas City, Kan./Mo., and Oakland, Calif., were named Enhanced Enterprise Communities, each receiving $25 million in federal grants and tax-exempt bond financing.

In the two years that have passed, EZ/ECs have created governance structures, approved projects, loaned funds, opened businesses, started new services. However, so far less than 30 percent of the urban EZ funds have even been requested by the sites. Community development experts argue that EZ/ECs are facing decades-old decline. "It's a long-term, incremental process that requires a lot of time and capital, things that don't satisfy the critics but will ultimately get the job done," Cowden says.

Citizen participation and creating new governance structures only adds to the timetable. "There is a tension between the goals of democratic participation and the goals of inclusion and efficiency; they don't necessarily work well together," says Robert Chaskin, a research fellow at the Chapin Hall Center for Children who has studied EZ governance. "The broader the focus on participation and the more inclusive you are, the longer it can take to make decisions and get projects started."

Still, it can be argued that citizen participation hasn't gone far enough, as mayors and city councils across the country have made certain they have significant decision-making power. Some say mayors will be the ones held responsible if funds are misallocated or the program doesn't live up to its promise. Those who are soured on EZ/ECs, though, say a power grab can only be expected when millions of dollars flow into cities.

Other critics of the program suggest it is fundamentally misguided. David Rusk, author of Cities Without Suburbs and former mayor of Albuquerque, N.M., says the isolation of urban areas means zone programs won't help. "The Empowerment Zone concept is really the wrong strategy," he says. "It's another installment of the basic community development strategy that we've pursued for 30 years now with little success. The real Empowerment Zone is the entire metropolitan area, entire regional economies."

But like it or not, the EZ/EC program probably will be the last large federal urban poverty program of the 20th century— President Clinton already has proposed another round of funding, and the lack of discussion of urban issues during the election is an indication of their low priority in Washington. With this in mind, suggestions have been made for how to best use and improve the program.

Target job creation strategies. Dan Immergluck, who is compiling a report on barriers to employment in the Chicago EZ for the Woodstock Institute, has found that more Pilsen/Little Village residents currently work in manufacturing jobs than do West Side residents. "If you're creating manufacturing jobs in Pilsen, that might be all you need to do," he says. "If those jobs are being created in the West Side cluster, though, you need to think about how to get people into those jobs: linkage policies for government funding, job training, those types of things."

Get out the vote. "Why do mayors ignore community representation at the grassroots level? Because poor citizens are not registered to vote," says Joseph R. Reid, director of the National Institute for Community Empowerment at Georgia State University. Reid headed up the Democratic National Committee's Empowerment Fall Initiative, which targeted 12 cities for EZ voter registration drives. In Chicago alone, Reid says more than 10,000 new voters registered, in part due to this effort. "I believe citizen input will change if people vote," he says. "Welfare reform would have played out differently if people in public housing all voted."

Build the network. An advantage of EZ/ECs is the connection made among residents, activists, service providers and government. "It's not all necessarily collaborations or partnerships," says Noah Temaner, project coordinator for the National Empowerment Zone Action Research Project. "People from grassroots organizations sit and chat with the housing commissioner from the city— avenues are created that weren't there previously, and that really does seem to be beneficial."

Get to the front of the line. Temaner and Cowden agree that too few communities are taking advantage of EZ/ECs' ability to bring in other federal programs. "People aren't thinking of that larger pool of $30 billion— for crime prevention, day care centers, job training— available every year on a priority basis," Cowden says.

Rethink the tax credit system. Currently, only companies in a zone get tax credits if they hire EZ residents, but since zones are often gerrymandered into odd shapes, this limits the number of potential employers, some which might be just blocks away. Immergluck suggests a federal rule change allowing firms outside the zone but within a mile or so to be eligible for the credits.

Contributing: Rebeca Mojica and Camille Colatosti.

More Information

• Noah Temaner, The Great Cities Institute, 322 S. Green St., Ste. 108, Chicago, IL 60607, (312) 996-3668, fax (312) 996-8933, nteman1@uic.edu
• Josepth R. Reid, Office of the Mayor, 55 Trinity Ave. SW, Ste 2400, Atlanta, GA 30308, (404) 853-7370, fax (404) 853-7372
• Robert Chaskin, Chapin Hall Center for Children, 1313 E. 60th, Chicago, IL 60637, (312) 753-5900
• Richard Cowden, AAEZ, 1620 Eye St. NW, Ste 300, Washington, DC 20006, (202) 466-2687
• Dan Immergluck, Woodstock Institute, 407 S. Dearborn, Chicago, IL 60605, (312) 427-8070.

Services: Juggling ActZone officials are grappling with the mandate to provide human services and create jobs. By Camille Colatosti

When Camden, N.J., received Empowerment Zone designation, the children at Lanning Square Elementary School were excited. Together, they painted their dreams of "what Camden could be if we all worked together," explains Elsa Suarez, the school's principal.

Dreaming of what cities could be if everyone worked together is one of the centerpieces of the Empowerment Zone/Enterprise Community program. Unlike past federal urban renewal programs that have addressed one discrete need— job training, housing, literacy— the EZ/EC initiative asks communities to create a comprehensive approach to development, not only creating jobs, but addressing the array of social service needs potential job seekers bring.

In many zones, the issue has put different parties on opposite sides of the table. In general, the business community and government officials lobby for incentives that would lure businesses and provide jobs. Neighborhood-based groups, on the other hand, want to see more funds set aside for human services that prepare residents for the workforce.

"You can send a person to a job-training program, but if they're not ready to receive it, it's like pouring water on a rock," says Larry Alcantar, a HUD technical advisor to the Detroit EZ. "Child care, drug problems— we have to deal with those things first."

Bill Leavy, director of the Greater West Town Community Development Project in Chicago, which recently won an EZ job-training grant, agrees. "You can't job-train a homeless man," he says "There's a basic level of survival we have to support."

This became a point of contention in Baltimore. Initially, some community groups felt that the mayor's office and the large institutional players on the board of the Empower Baltimore Management Corp., which oversees the EZ, were pushing the focus of the plan toward jobs and training and away from social services, according to a study by Marilyn Gittell of the Graduate School at City University of New York. "There was not a complete understanding of the living conditions of many zone residents," says Michael Seipp, executive director of Historic East Baltimore Community Action Coalition.

"People saw there was potential for business to benefit and not the community," says Michael Preston, public information officer for Empower Baltimore. So Empower Baltimore opened its board meetings to the community to hash out a plan that represented both points of view. "We found that [jobs and human services] don't exist separately. We had to show we would create jobs, but we wanted to make sure residents could take advantage of those jobs," he says.

Preston says leaders specifically added to their mission statement "community capacity building" and "improving the quality of life" to complement the goal of "business and workforce development."

But language hasn't yet translated into reality. The focus on job creation in Baltimore is evident in the strategic plan's proposed budget, which allocates half the EZ money to economic and job-related projects.

To date, Empower Baltimore's greatest success has been its customized job training program. As Preston explains, "The employer comes to us and says, 'We have X number of jobs, and we want to hire Empowerment Zone residents.' We say that we'll provide training, so long as you agree to hire the residents full-time, for at least $6.50 an hour, with benefits."

Thus far, no human services have been funded, Preston acknowledges. And it's not because the city's governing structure has ignored them. Grassroots participation and outreach are supposed to take place through six Village Centers, nonprofits that will enable people on the neighborhood level to make decisions about how money is spent. "The Village Center is a partnership of people, businesses, churches and nonprofit organizations," Preston says. "They funnel money to the neighborhood services, such as child care, literacy and so on."

But two years into the EZ program, the centers still are not open for business, putting Baltimore's human service delivery on hold. Their problems are emblematic of some of the difficulties in providing comprehensive services: quarrels over territory, decisions about priorities, delays in planning. "One Village Center leader told me, 'We got more people involved and took three steps backward,' " Seipp says.

Similar delay is taking place in Detroit, with the push for jobs and investment overshadowing funding for social services. "The process is slow. It's time-consuming," says Carole Quarterman, head of Detroit's Child Care Coordinating Council/Wayne County, Inc. "It took months for the city and state to set up their structure, and there were days when the rules and roadblocks seemed to be almost too much. . . . It takes a great deal of commitment to keep your eye on the vision."

That vision revolves around the federal government's stated EZ goals: "physical development as well as human development. A community where streets are safe to walk, the air and water are clean, housing is secure, and human services are accessible . . . a community that can be a source of strength and hope to its residents."

In Detroit, several projects are poised to bring the EZ neighborhoods closer to this community of "strength and hope," though none has yet received a single EZ dollar. In January, Quarterman's group will open a "one-stop shop" that will locate welfare, child care, health and job training services in one building and streamline services so residents need only fill out one set of forms and meet with one counselor or case manager. "Now parents won't have to go to ten different locations and tell their story ten different times," she says.

Detroit's one-stop shop will be located in a closed branch of the Detroit Public Library. Renovations on the building got underway soon after Quarterman's organization convened local agencies to strategize about how to improve social service delivery to zone residents. "Ten agencies came together, sat down to wish and dream about what childhood development and family services we needed for the people in our community," Quarterman says. They came up with the idea for the renovated library as an "integrated family service center with a continuum of services," containing agencies such as Family Independent Services (formerly the Michigan Dept. of Social Services) and the Children's Aid Society, as well as teen agencies, public school programs, child care and head start programs, early childhood development training, and nutrition classes. There will be a model kitchen, a food program, adult education and job readiness training.

"We know that this is the right approach," Quarterman says. "It is in strengthening and in empowering families that you come up with a strong, sustainable community."

Despite the optimism of some zone leaders, critics say the comprehensive approach is monumental and the money just isn't enough. "Clearly $100 million is a lot of cash," says Frank McCoy, a writer for Black Enterprise, an economic development magazine. "But the amount pales when held against the mega-problems and billion dollar budgets of the nation's largest cities."

In Detroit the entire city, not only the zone, is suffering, McCoy points out. Almost half the residents in the city's EZ live in poverty (median family income is $9,870 per year) and the infant mortality rate is the second highest in the nation. But median income outside Detroit's zone is also low, with families averaging $18,740 a year. Others agree that the sum falls short of meeting all zone needs; but they are quick to note that the money was not meant to stand alone but to leverage other funds. In Baltimore, for example, Preston says his group has reached out to foundations for support: "Five or six foundations have committed 1 percent of their assets per year over five years," he says. Quarterman's one-stop shop got moving with a matching grant from the Kellogg Foundation, she says, and each partner agency will bring its own funding stream to the project. The EZ/EC program also allows zones special consideration when applying for other federal programs. Some states have made that commitment as well.

Sea Change Resource Center in Philadelphia has taken the concept of comprehensive community building in a different direction by launching a model of sustainable development, community nutrition and social service referrals, says Rosalind Johnson, the group's president. ''[It's] an eco-village. We're farming in the city," she explains.

The organization currently sponsors a horticultural center, an organic vegetable farm, a tree farm, and is considering the development of an urban fish farm, as well. These centers provide healthy food and shade plants for the community and also promise jobs. For example, an apprenticeship program teaches youth horticulture, landscaping and agriculture skills and provides job placement for graduates.

Sea Change plans to develop an "eco-industrial park" with what Johnson describes as "light manufacturing from an environmental perspective." The factories would provide jobs for zone residents without harming the health of the overall community. The factories would recycle used construction materials and develop fuel and new housing materials.

"Because we are an EZ, the feds and the state are offering more support," Johnson says. For example, because many of the group's programs fall into the category of "urban farming," Sea Change received grants from the U.S. Forest Service for feasibility studies on wood conversion and fish farming. "That's totally unique for us," she says.

Although EZ dollars have not stretches far enough to bring social service delivery into a one-stop shop at Sea Change, the group plays a key role in referring residents to local agencies. "There are so many issues— drugs, alcoholism, homelessness. We plug [residents] into organizations that work specifically on these issues," Johnson says, adding that perhaps the next round of EZ funding will enable the group to house many of the services onsite.

To Johnson, the EZ program allows people to "create a new vision of what a city is all about. Many people had pretty much written off urban communities," she explains. "Now, people are starting to see that, when we bond together . . . all of our dreams can come true."

More Information

• Carole Quarterman, 4Cs, 2751 E. Jefferson, Ste. 420, Detroit, MI 48207, (313) 259-4411
• Michael Preston, Empower Baltimore Management Corp., 111 S. Calvert St., Baltimore, MD 21202, (410) 783-4405
• Michael Seipp, HEBCAC, 808 N. Chester St., Baltimore, MD 21205, (410) 614-4216
• Rosalind Johnson, 1608 N. Carlisle St., Philadelphia, PA 19121, (215) 978-5930
• Donna Cooper, City of Philadelphia, 101 N. Broad St., 3rd Fl., Philadelphia, PA 19107, (215) 686-9022.

Economic Growth: Innovative Job Creation

Just ask Manuel Burgess, a longtime employee of Drasin Knitting Mills in Los Angeles who now co-owns the company through the help of a non-traditional loan from the Los Angeles Community Development Bank. When Drasin's owners decided to retire and close the company, 150 employees, including Burgess, would have lost their jobs.

"For a year, I couldn't find a partner to help me with the financing, and the only alternative was to liquidate the company," says Burgess, who has renamed the company Trinity Knitworks. "The bank gave us financing through the assets of the company. It's definitely an unconventional loan because regular banks would not touch us-they require liquid assets. The bank took a chance that we'd succeed, and we are going to succeed."

L.A. bank officials say they hope to create l0,000 jobs in ten years by lending to a wide variety of small-and mid-size businesses like Trinity through loans ranging from $2,500 to $25,000, and through other loans of up to $5 million for start-up equity and venture capital: The EZ bank will partner with other banks and community lenders to provide these larger loans. More than half of any new hires resulting from a loan must come from the zone, and every $35,000 lent has to create at least one job.

In Detroit, a coalition of seven private banks and three financial intermediaries have pledged to invest more than $l billion over ten years in businesses moving into or expanding in the zone. The pledge is showing results. A loan of $200,000 from the National Bank of Detroit allowed Forefront Printing and Graphics to add five people to its three-person staff. "This has helped me buy more equipment, bring in more employees and stabilize my business," Keith Williams, Forefront's owner, told the Detroit Free Press.

Detroit's Empowerment Zone Financial Institutions Consortium already has exceeded its original $76 million lending target for 1995 by $209 million. In 1994 these same institutions loaned only $29 million within the EZ's 18 square miles. How were the banks able to go so far above the previous year's lending activity without relaxing standards? It took a many-faceted approach, says Consortium Chair Brenda Schneider, including working with Chrysler, Ford and General Motors to reach automotive suppliers and changing loan packages to meet local conditions. "These businesses have made a commitment to the city, just as [the banks] made a commitment. Their response has been fantastic," Schneider says.

To reach prospective borrowers, the banks initiated a "street banker" approach, an aggressive outreach program that sent lenders into EZ neighborhoods to present seminars at churches and community organizations. They established a block club initiative, where bank executives paired with business leaders to adopt a section of the zone for intense business and mortgage investment.

Many zones are establishing revolving loan funds to help small businesses get credit. In North Central Philadelphia, the Empowerment Zone's lending arm, the North Philadelphia Financial Partnership, lent money to transform an abandoned factory into a studio/art business center housing ten businesses that employ 25 people in jobs such as sculpting, carpentry, video film-making and computer design. In another section of the zone, a $100,000 low-interest EZ loan enabled the Sea Change Resource Center to set up a for-profit subsidiary that will train more than 12 zone residents to remove asbestos and lead from the Philadelphia Naval Base and city-owned homes, especially low-income housing.

Often loan funds co-locate with one-stop capital shops in comprehensive business development centers-central access points for funding, whether through Small Business Administration programs or local community development corporations. In Detroit, consortium member Comerica Bank established a new small-business financial center that cuts approval times and streamlines the application process for loans up to $100,000.

The Business Empowerment Center in Baltimore has a two-year budget of $2.9 million to offer on-site lending, technical assistance and coordination of financing. The center's staff help owners fine-tune business plans and marketing strategies; solve labor, employment and management problems; and discover procurement opportunities. The center also provides access to a computerized job bank, workshops on job interviewing techniques, and neighborhood-based entrepreneurial training. To date, the center has assisted more than 70 businesses, 75 percent of which are minority owned, retaining more than 150 jobs and attracting an estimated 500.

Assistance such as this can be crucial to helping a budding entrepreneur get started, a job-creation avenue widely hailed as necessary for many Empowerment Zones and Enterprise Communities. "It is very difficult to get some of the big corporations and chain stores to invest in an area that has been depressed for a long time," says Reginald Nunnally, executive director of Boston's Enhanced Enterprise Community. "The Blue Hill neighborhood had no supermarkets, banks, very little retail for 25 years. [We] realized that, in order to attract larger companies with jobs, it's important to show that the community is willing to invest here."

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino has committed $2.5 million to an aggressive program to attract entrepreneurs to Blue Hill Avenue, an initiative that includes a training program sponsored by the University of Massachusetts and supported by Boston's Enhanced Enterprise Community. Nunnally says the strategy is working. "We've seen 14 new businesses opening up— laundromats, moderately priced restaurants, hair salons, car accessorizing shops," he says. "Now we're looking at developing a major retail mall, an $8 million public/private project that could create 150 jobs directly as well as the jobs that come from that. If you can attract a bank, a pharmacy and a supermarket into an area such as this, others spring up around them."

One of Blue Hill Avenue's new businesses is Keith's Place, a restaurant named after owner Cheryl Straughter's son. For years, when Straughter, a zone resident and owner of a small, breakfast-only restaurant, approached banks with the proposal to expand she was told it was too high risk. Then she heard about the city's program. With technical assistance and a loan, she bought property adjacent to a city parking lot and close to the expressway that will feed the city's planned airport expansion. Business has been so good that she says she hopes to someday expand the 1,800 square-foot restaurant and add to the current 12 employees.

"In relation to my predictions, I'm off the charts," Straughter says, explaining how the restaurant, with much positive publicity, has attracted young people back into the area as well as some celebrity patrons. "My role is to show that there is another way than the perceptions people have to make a few dollars in the inner city."

In addition to supporting new entrepreneurs, EZ/ECs are trying to link residents with existing jobs. One particularly successful zone-supported program is Project VIDA— Valley Initiative for Development and Advancement— a high-skills training program. Originally sponsored by Valley Interfaith, a nonprofit in the Texas Rio Grande EZ, administration of the program has now shifted to local churches and nonprofits. VIDA essentially acts as a job broker: Staff research and contact firms and work with company officials, industry experts and academics to determine what a training program should include.

As part of the Customized Training Program, VIDA links companies with various resources to bring in workers. Participants get minimum wage while in training and at least $6.50 per hour upon completion, with opportunity for advancement.

For example, through a contract with Amfels, a large ship, rig and barge builder, 30 zone residents are now employed as welders, and the company plans to eventually hire 300 more.

Union Support Life looks a lot different to Alonzo Terry now that he's an apprentice painter earning $10 an hour. A year ago, Terry, a 33-year-old father of two, was unemployed, on drugs and sleeping in shelters and abandoned cars. Today he is one of 110 Detroit Empowerment Zone residents entering a career in the construction trades through a union-funded program called Detroit Works. An affiliate of America Works, which has similar programs in San Francisco, Atlanta and St. Louis, the project uses pension funds from the locals of the International Brotherhood of Painters and Allied Trades and the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America to bankroll community development projects and train city residents in carpentry and painting trades. The unions-which started the program in an effort to increase union market share of construction work in the inner city-accept participants who may have checkered work histories, and the city assures that the prevailing wage will be paid on city-funded construction projects. Pre-apprenticeship programs lasting 12 weeks pay a stipend of about $10 an hour and are followed with job placement. HUD's recent commitment of $1.2 million to train additional zone residents on local housing projects added to the program's capacity; the five-year goal is to train 500 apprentices (at least 50 percent from within the zone) and construct 350 units of housing in greater Detroit. More Information Ken Stewart, Detroit Works Partnership, 1401 Farrow Rd., Ferndale, MI 48220. (810) 548-9202.

In Baltimore, they call it "spin-off" businesses, a creative way to leverage employment from concentrated local industry. The presence of several large health care institutions and universities in or near Baltimore's EZ has led the Business Empowerment Center staff to identify products and services that can be supplied by zone-based businesses. Hospitals, for example, need services for laundry, laboratory equipment and building maintenance, many of which are now supplied in-house or by suburban vendors. The zone's current target is to establish two new supplier firms in the zone and add 10 existing local suppliers to these institutions' networks.

The Bronx Overall Economic Development Corp., which manages the Bronx Empowerment Zone in New York, has two similar programs in the works, one focusing on construction contractors (there are about 30 or so construction trade-related businesses within the zone) and the other on contractors in other industries. BOEDC will hire vendors to provide small contractors with training, bonding and technical assistance in areas such as bidding strategies, presentation skills and joint venture design. The vendors also will work with construction managers to break bids down into trade packages that allow small firms to compete.

"Many of our city and state institutions procure services from around the nation that we are equipped to provide here in the Bronx, but smaller businesses don't have the type of management that is plugged into the network of information," says Yvette Clarke, director of the Bronx Empowerment Zone program. "Hospitals are a major industry in New York City that purchase a lot of goods and services from the tri-state area. Many of our municipal services have fleets and certainly within the zone we have people who can be trained as mechanics to work on maintaining the police force, ambulance or sanitation fleet, so that dollars circulate within the city."

One step beyond vendor matching is support programs for key industry sectors. The Greater Portsmouth, Ohio, EC will use $60,000 to set up a Business and Industry Development Center focusing on the smaller plastic and wood product companies that abound in the region. Run by the Ohio Valley Rural Development Commission, the center will do outreach to let the public know these companies exist, provide financing and funding referrals, and foster networking for companies to share promotion, research, design and production capabilities.

In some zones, the private sector is initiating such partnerships. In Detroit, a group of four auto industry suppliers, the Hispanic Manufacturing Consortium, is moving into an abandoned Cadillac plant to expand operations and train workers. The consortium hopes to bring at least 200 new $7- to $18-per-hour jobs into the zone in the first year, and 700 by the fifth, says Carmen Munoz, president of Munoz Machine Products and one of the consortium's founders.

"We are going to train the residents so they learn quality control, welding, drafting . . . all of the things we do," Munoz says. "Then they will have the option of working for any one of our organizations. We are going to have a lot of diversity and, with all four of us, if any one has a surplus of employees we can pass them on to the other so we don't have to have any layoffs— that is very important to us."

Cooperative ventures can go yet another step. When no supermarket chains responded to the call from residents of the Buffalo, N.Y., Enterprise Community, various city organizations and private institutions decided to open up their own. In the spring of 1997, the EC will break ground on a new full-service retail food store, using $100,000 of EC funds and $4 million in low-interest loan money. The store is expected to gross about $50,000 per week and create about 50 jobs. For a fee of $25, residents become part owners of the cooperative market and gain the right to elect board members.

"Having it resident-owned will check some of the theft and vandalism problems traditionally associated with being located in an area like this," says Joseph Cox, project manager and legal counsel for the EC. "Clearly if you own part of the market and live on the corner and see a kid getting ready to spray graffiti on a building, you're going to have something to say about that. This is more than just a market, it is a sign of cooperative growth."

More Information

• Comerica Bank, P.O. Box 75000, Detroit, MI 48275-3350, (313) 222-5830
• Trinity Knitworks, 1721 Trinity St., Los Angeles, CA 90015, (213) 747-5583
• Robert Alaniz, Los Angeles Community Development Bank, 6500 Wilshire Blvd., 21st FL., Los Angeles, CA 90048, (213) 966-5727
• Boston EEC, 20 Hampden St., Boston, MA 02119, (617) 445-3413
• Keith's Place, 469 Blue Hill Ave., Dorchester, MA 02121, (617) 427-7899
• VIDA, 1715 E. Pike Blvd., Weslaco, TX 78596, (210) 973-8600, fax (210) 447-0200
• Empower Baltimore Management Corp., 111 S Calvert St., Baltimore, MD 21202, (410) 783-4405, fax (410) 783-0526
• BOEDC, 198 E. 161st St., 2nd FL, The Bronx, NY 10451, (718) 590-6202, fax (718) 590-6249
• Greater Portsmouth Ohio EC, USDA/Rural Development, Federal Building, 200 N. High St., Rm. 507, Columbus, OH 43215, (614) 469-5400, fax (614) 469-5802
• Munoz Machine Products, 13420 Wayne Rd, Livonia, MI 48150, (313) 422-0355
• Buffalo Enterprise Community, 620 Main St., Buffalo, NY 14202, (716) 842-6923.

Governance: Who Calls the Shots?

Despite a trend toward city hall control, some communities have managed to make their voices heard. By Paul Cuadros

GETTING INVOLVED in her community was in Frances Minnis' bones. Her mother, Catherine, had a long history of community activism in West Philadelphia, so when her old neighborhood was designated an Empowerment Zone, she got involved. But at the age of 76, the numerous meetings were too much, so Minnis took up the cause.

"Somebody had to do it," says Minnis, an attorney who now sits on West Philadelphia's Empowerment Zone Trust Board. "I decided to help my mother and help the community."

Inspiring people to participate was what Empowerment Zones were designed to do, but observers say a strong start hasn't been sustained. "When they were putting together the strategic plans, that's the point where you saw most of the grassroots or community-level participation," says Michael Bennett, co-principal investigator for the National Empowerment Zone Action Research Project in Chicago. "But then when each city got to determine the governance structure, most city halls took over."

Each EZ/EC has its own governing body, the structure of which largely determines if residents feel a part of the process. Generally, EZ governance mixes representatives from government, institutions and residents. But the similarity ends there. Citizen input can be integral or marginal.

In Baltimore, the board is a balance among government officials, community leaders and residents. Cleveland's EZ is led by government officials, local development corporations that represent the neighborhoods and a citizen advisory council. The Los Angeles Community Development Bank is run by a board of directors appointed by banks, university presidents, the city and the county, with an oversight committee appointed by local government. The community is represented by task forces.

Measuring community involvement is also dependent on how each city defines "community." It can mean residents who live in the zone. It also can mean institutional organizations that represent the community or neighborhood.

" 'Community' generally includes residents of the zone as defined in each of these places, but rarely or not ever exclusively residents," says Robert Chaskin, a research fellow for the Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago who has studied EZ governance. "Also included were local nonprofits, service providers, local businesses and more informal voluntary associations such as block clubs and business associations."

In Detroit, for example, EZ governance is mainly influenced by institutions that represent the community. The city's Empowerment Zone Development Corp. is composed of a 50-member board of directors that includes a 25-member executive committee and is divided into three categories of community and government representatives.

Local Community representatives are people from community development corporations, neighborhood councils, block clubs and neighborhood businesses, as well as those representing youth, elderly and disabled concerns. Larger Community representatives are from religious, civic, financial and other institutions. The remaining representatives come from local government.

Detroit's model relies on balance among these groups and uses organizational representatives to speak on behalf of EZ residents. Neighborhood Review Panels help residents contribute. "I know that the communities are deeply involved in the Empowerment Zones, and we're hoping and knowing and believing that the strategic plans are going to work," says Rosa Edwards, who sits on the board and review panel and is the treasurer of Mobilizing Our Own Resources and Energy for Neighborhoods, a nonprofit in central Detroit.

Community input was paramount in Detroit from the beginning, when l 8 of the 27 members of the Coordinating Council were community representatives, says Larry Alcantar, a technical advisor to the zone on contract from Price Waterhouse with the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development. "It was an 'open forum' atmosphere, where individuals could bring their concerns to the table," he says. "We tried to carry that feeling over to the governing structure."

Overlooking Oversight? Cities and rural areas had to show citizen participation in the application process for Empowerment Zone/Enterprise Community designation, or risk being passed by. "There was no question that the federal government made a special effort in the beginning to make sure community groups were involved," says Marilyn Gittell, director of the Howard Samuels State Management and Policy Center at CUNY, which in May released a report on community capacity building in EZ/ECs. "They led [communities] to believe HUD would be right behind them." But two years after designation, federal enforcement of citizen input is essentially dead. "The federal government doesn't really get involved with governance issues. It's up to the [local] jurisdiction to create the structure they want," says Douglass Austin, a technical assistance contractor with Price Waterhouse. "The zone is not supposed to vary from its strategic plan, but most zones didn't elaborate in great detail about how governance would work in their plan." In EZ/EC lingo, Austin is a "generalist," a troubleshooter who covers several Empowerment Zones and Enterprise Communities, helping identify impediments to a zone's goals and connecting residents and local government to federal assistance. HUD uses the generalists and its regional field staff to monitor how well zones are meeting their goals. If participation is lacking, the feds can "pull designation," according to Karen Hinton, special assistant to HUD Assistant Secretary Andrew Cuomo. This extreme measure has been broached for other issues— for example, New York was threatened with losing its EZ status when it looked like the state and city might renege on coming through with funds they had pledged for the zone. But Austin says as a generalist he can't recommend pulling designation over community participation. "Even if in my opinion it was a terribly run organization, I would never— even off the cuff— mention something like that," he says. "When I get a call from community members, some do complain, and I tell them for better or worse, the city has a governing structure, and that's what you have to work with." Hinton says policing zones over resident input isn't necessary, anyway. "Once you start empowering people through the application phase, it's natural for people to stay involved," she says. Others disagree. "Generally, all government agencies want as little participation as possible— people call you and yell at you; it slows things down; mayors are still accountable. Bad things go with participation," says Noah Temaner, project coordinator for the National Empowerment Zone Action Research Project. Most experts say residents have found it much more difficult to have their voices heard since designation. Temaner suggests zones would be likely to improve their citizen participation if they knew the federal government could enforce it. But without either an inducement to reward zones that can demonstrate participation or punishment for those that can't, the current rules leave oversight an empty threat.

BUT FOR MANY CITIES, real community participation has not come easily. Atlanta's first attempt at the EZ application was so lacking in grassroots input that a second round of planning was required. In round two, representatives from 69 neighborhoods were put in control of the process.

"We were serious about empowering the communities," says Joseph R. Reid, coordinator of the EZ initiative for the City of Atlanta. "Citizens actually created the strategic plan. The representatives chose approximately ten square miles to concentrate the resources."

As in Detroit, the experience of building a strategic plan helped keep Atlanta's citizens involved after designation. The Atlanta Empowerment Zone Corp. was created according to specific guidelines in the strategic plan: The 17-member executive board includes six community members from the advisory board, itself comprised of 36 members elected by neighborhood residents.

"The community residents are the largest block among any group represented on the governance structure," says Larry Wallace, HUD's technical advisor to the zone. "Just on the voting basis, the community residents, with any other three members, can effectively control anything and everything."

Reid says the group that created the strategic plan built the structure with this in mind, although he adds that they may not have realized how much work it would take to make the process run. "Nothing can move in the Atlanta EZ unless it moves as a partnership," he says.

GOVERNANCE ALONE cannot determine how much community involvement occurs in the zones. Ultimately it is the responsibility of community residents to get involved and participate in the process.

But this is not easy, considering that many communities are used to having government or institutional organizations like nonprofits or foundations make the plans. "From my perspective, the city has been looking for the community to step up," Minnis says. "What they stated implicitly but not expressly is, 'I can't help you manage your internal house. You need to get that house in order for us to take you seriously.' "

While some cities have had an obvious drop in community involvement between the strategic planning and governance stages, Philadelphia's has been less dramatic. "I think there are different people involved not fewer," says Donna Cooper, executive director of the Mayor's Office of Community Services. "On some level there are more average residents involved and on another level there are more community leaders involved."

Within the first four months of the grant award, the city hired 18 community organizers to foster more citizen participation. And the governance structure has provided for direct residential involvement. Each of the city's three EZ subzones has a Community Trust Board with about 22 members that decide on activities and funding for projects. The majority of the board members, 60 percent, were elected by each community, with 40 percent appointed by the mayor. The governing structure was negotiated by the community with the mayor early on, says Carlos Acosta, executive director of the city's zone.

Despite grassroots input, the mayor has final approval on all projects. Cooper says this is to ensure that programs are viable, and has not affected the decisions or plans of the trust boards. "There have been a couple of cases where the mayor had problems with some specifics and sent it back," says Douglass Austin, HUD's technical advisor for the Philadelphia area. "For the most part the community has gotten what they want, and in fact, now you're seeing a big concern . . . that this mayor isn't going to be around forever."

In the Lowell, Mass., Enterprise Community, organizers made community input a top priority. "Lowell is really trying to live the spirit of this whole program by getting folks involved who have never had any formal civic involvement," says Paul Horn, the HUD technical advisor for New England Enterprise Communities.

Each designated neighborhood held elections to create a 15-member board composed entirely of residents. And like Philly, the Lowell EC hired a community organizer, who is charged with getting people out to meetings and publishing a monthly newsletter in Spanish, Portuguese and Khmer for the many zone residents new to this country.

While community participation is high and government control low, the process has been slow. Members lack experience dealing with city hall and serving on boards. "We've created a fragile governance because it's been very grassroots," says Susanne Beaton, the Enterprise Community project coordinator. "I could get more projects moving faster if I took the quick way, with experienced board members and no language barriers, but that would be pitching strength to strength, rather than building capacity."

Minnis says zone residents need to know that even though they may not have formal experience, they bring something valuable to the table. "What has not been translated to the people is that all of this is for you," she says. "All the other ways didn't work. The government seems to realize that we can't go in there with paternalistic attitudes. That doesn't work anymore."

Paul Cuadros is a Chicago writer. His last story for TNW was on the closing of Peoples Housing in the Sept./Oct. 1996 issue.

More Information

• Michael Bennett, National Empowerment Zone Action Research Project, The Great Cities Institute, 322 S. Green St., Ste. 108, Chicago, IL 60607, (312) 996-3668, fax (312) 996-8933
• Robert J. Chaskin, Chapin Hall Center for Children, University of Chicago, 1313 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637, (312) 753-5942
• Carlos Acosta, City of Philadelphia, 1600 Arch St., Philadelphia, PA 19107, (215) 686-9094
• Donna Cooper, Mayor's Office of Community Services, City of Philadelphia, 101 N. Broad St., 3rd Fl,. Philadelphia, PA 19107, (215) 686-9022
• Joseph R. Reid, Office of the Mayor, 55 Trinity Ave. SW, Ste. 2400, Atlanta, GA 30308, (404) 853-7370, fax (404) 853-7372
• Susanne Beaton, City of Lowell, EC Dept. of Planning and Development, 50 Arcand Drive, Lowell, MA 01852, (508) 970-4252
• EZ/EC Task Force, Rm. 7136, U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, 451 Seventh St. SW, Washington, DC 20410, (202) 619-0314
• Marilyn Gittell, CUNY, 25 W. 43rd St., Rm. 1512, New York, NY 10036, (212) 642-2974

Case Study: Opportunity Lost

IN THE FIRST ROUND, the council has approved some 86 grants totaling about $45 million. The greatest complaint about these early grants is that they went to well-entrenched community groups, many of whom had ties to the council. For instance, Bethel New Life, the West Side social service organization, was awarded nearly $900,000 to fund various programs; Bethel's director, Mary Nelson, sits on the council.

"There's a code of ethics that prohibits council members from voting for proposals that go to their groups," Cerda says. "We take it seriously; if a group gets funding, it's because they deserve it, not because their director's on the council."

But nothing prohibits council members from wheeling and dealing with each other. "There's a lot of talk about deal-making behind the scenes," says a council observer. "It's not so much [a case of] 'Vote for this because the mayor wants you to,' as 'I'll vote for your proposal if you vote for mine.' "

Some critics feel the council funds programs that might have received money from other sources. "This should ideally be a 'but for' thing— as in, but for the Empowerment Zone this program wouldn't get funded," says CWED's Cole. "But that's not happening. . . . Too often it's a situation where if the plan is well-written you get the money; it's not so much whether the community needs the money. "

For example, the council funded a proposal to develop a shopping strip at 47th and Lake Park in Kenwood. Though the mall's a boon for the community, it's backed by the city and the University of Chicago. "You could argue that development would happen without the Empowerment Zone," Cole says.

In the last few sessions, most proposals sailed through without opposition. To Cerda, that's a sign that council members have a common goal. To Cole it suggests that outsiders feel locked out. "The planning process was more revolutionary, more visionary," he says. "It's always a challenge to get people involved. This program's got to be about more than writing grants."

More Information

• Johnnie Cole, Community Workshop on Economic Development, 100 S. Morgan, Chicago, IL 60607, (312) 234-0249
• Noah Tenamer, National Empowerment Zone Action Research Project, The Great Cities Institute, 322 S. Green St., Ste. 108, Chicago, IL 60607, (312) 996-3668, fax (312) 996-8933, nteman1@uic.edu
• Karen Hinton, HUD, 451 7th St. SW, Room 7130, Washington, DC 20410, (202) 708-6339
• Jose Cerda, Dept. of Planning, 20 N. Clark, Ste. 2800, Chicago, IL 60602, (312) 744-9623
• Paul Ramey, 333 W. Arthington, Chicago, IL 60624

Ben Joravsky is a Chicago writer. His last story for TNW was on the Maxwell Street Market in the April/May 1994 issue.

Environment: Growing Green Projects

In Buffalo's Enterprise Community, sandwiched between the Buffalo River and one of the city's oldest neighborhoods, the Republic Steel site is waking up from more than a decade-long, contaminated slumber. If all goes as planned, by this time next year greenhouses will cover 22 acres of cleared land in the heart of what used to be the mill's parking lot.

"Tomato Republic," as the $23 million project has been nicknamed, will clean up a good chunk of the brownfield, create more than 100 jobs for EC residents and produce half a million pounds of tomatoes per acre every year. As the snow piles up in February 1998, Buffalo residents could be biting into their first harvest of pesticide-free, no-chemical, locally grown winter tomatoes.

Although Empowerment Zones and Enterprise Communities were created to jump-start economic growth, many communities have worked environmental initiatives into that equation. The EZ application pushed cities to look at environmental issues, emphasizing development of sustainable communities. "That meant trying to balance the economic development activities that were more-or-less traditional with environmental and social justice considerations," says Harriet Tregoning, director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's urban and economic development division.

While converting a fallow steel mill into a tomato farm ranks as one of the more creative environmental efforts, EZ/EC neighborhoods across the country are redeveloping brownfields, embarking on projects to conserve energy, training residents in environmental cleanup and promoting green industry.

NOT EVERYONE JUMPED on the environmental bandwagon. "While there were a lot of applications that had environmental elements, the majority of them did not," Tregoning says. But, she adds, as EZ/ECs continue to move toward their goals "a lot of communities have turned around with projects that weren't envisioned in their original application that have a lot of environmental features." Tregoning attributes this to one overwhelming factor: high levels of community participation. "The community members I've talked to are very concerned about environmental issues," she says.

Residents of poor communities are disproportionately effected by incinerators, landfills, polluting factories and contaminated industrial land, so the need for clean, green development and sustainable communities is not a pie-in-the-sky idea. As Empowerment Zone residents helped create development plans for their communities, many offered a keen understanding of urban health and environmental hazards and a sense that an environmentally conscious plan had to be a priority.

Take, for instance, the Phillips neighborhood in Minneapolis, the poorest and most ethnically diverse community in Minnesota. In the late 1970s, Hennepin County, which encompasses Phillips, proposed construction of a garbage transfer station on a ten-acre site near the edge of the neighborhood. Trash from all over the city would have been unloaded from smaller collection trucks at the site, where larger trucks would have carted the waste to landfills and incinerators. Phillips residents fought the plan tenaciously for 15 years, long enough for such a site to become obsolete, and the county finally dropped the idea.

"In the process of that battle, the neighborhood learned an awful lot about solid waste issues. They'd really become experts about garbage," says Michael Krause, executive director of the Green Institute, an environmental organization that grew out of the neighborhood's fight.

Now part of Minneapolis's Enterprise Community, Phillips residents and the Green Institute have gotten a chance to implement their own vision for their neighborhood. Already up and running, the Green Institute's first project is the ReUse Center, a retail store that sells salvaged construction and building materials and is set up like a classroom, with displays and classes on everything from environmental justice to bathroom repairs.

"We keep these materials out of the waste stream on one end," Krause says, "and because we sell them at a fraction of the cost that you'd normally pay, we make them accessible to low- and moderate-income homeowners who are trying to fix up their homes. So we're improving the quality of the housing stock." With more than $350,000 in EC funding, the project has thus far created 19 living-wage jobs ($7.50 per hour minimum plus benefits) for area residents.

On the would-be garbage transfer site, the Green Institute is using EC funds to develop a green business incubator. Prospective tenants include a nonprofit that manufactures solar ovens for sale in developing nations; a company that buys old airplanes, disassembles them and sells the parts for reuse; and an entrepreneur who plans to make high-quality stationery from dryer lint produced by the large laundry facility of a neighborhood hospital. Eventually, the Phillips neighborhood's business incubator will be part of a larger eco-industrial park.

This concept isn't limited to Minneapolis, however. For example, Baltimore's EZ proposed one of the first eco-industrial parks in the country. There, different manufacturing and service businesses will collaborate for greater economic and environmental gain— they might share energy, reuse water or utilize the by-products of one business as feedstock for another.

BUFFALO'S TOMATO FARM and the Green Institute's efforts are testimony to the fact that communities are hardly short on ideas when it comes to environmental initiatives. But one kind of green begets the other: At some level it's cold hard EZ cash that has helped communities make their environmental visions blossom. "Given the long history of the neighborhood on the garbage transfer issue, I think this was where the neighborhood was headed," Krause says. "It was a question of having the resources, and [EC funds] moved it toward reality a lot sooner."

In Chicago, Empowerment Zone funds will be spent on a project initiated by the Chicago Association of Neighborhood Development Organizations to provide market analysis and environmental risk assessments for brownfields. CANDO Executive Director Ted Wysocki says that without EZ funds, cleaning up Chicago's brownfields would be much less likely; marketing a brownfield for redevelopment can be almost impossible unless a developer knows just how much time and money cleanup will require.

"This is a good example of where it makes sense to spend public funds up front that really categorize and analyze what's there, because if they don't spend those funds no [private company] is going to spend them," he says. "And then the community continues to be plagued by these abandoned sites without being able to use them."

In addition to money for analysis, the Chicago EZ has asked for federal waivers that would, among other things, make sure a new owner who complies with Illinois environmental standards is not held liable for the contamination caused by previous tenants.

Extensive support from federal agencies also has brought money for environmental initiatives into EZ/EC communities. Over the past two years, the EPA has awarded 76 grants of up to $200,000 each to spur brownfield redevelopment; 34 have gone to cities that boast either an Empowerment Zone or Enterprise Community. The Green Institute recently picked up a $20,000 EPA environmental justice grant, and HUD this year awarded the City of Chicago a $50 million loan for brownfield cleanup.

By no means is the federal government footing the full bill for the greening of urban America; the Empowerment Zone investment is usually small but critical. EZ/EC designation has helped communities round up funds from other sources: for-profit investments, private foundations and city-level redevelopment programs.

Renewal Atlanta, a division of Boston-based Renewal, Inc., has built a recycling processor on the site of an abandoned truck terminal in Atlanta's Pittsburg EZ neighborhood. The facility, which is expected to handle 300 tons of paper, aluminum, glass, plastic and corregated cardboard a day, will hire as many as 60 full-time staff, at least half of whom will be zone residents.

"We received a processing contract with the City of Atlanta, but most of our customers are from the private sector, especially offices and the hospitality industry," says Michael Murphy, Renewal, Inc.'s president. "We're finding out that we're getting a good deal of new business from companies that were not recycling before."

The Atlanta plant, which will open in December, is expected to be the company's flagship; Renewal, Inc. is already planning similar projects in other EZs, including Baltimore, Los Angeles and Detroit.

BUT WHILE POSITIVE ENVIRONMENTAL EZ/EC initiatives are being realized all over the country, many designated communities face environmental problems so severe that zone programs barely scratch the surface.

Through a highly-touted program in Atlanta, for instance, more than 300 Empowerment Zone households have been retrofitted with water-saving shower heads and low-flow toilets, which will conserve water end result in lower bills, says Claire McLeveighn, spokeswoman for the Atlanta EZ Corp. An environmental entrepreneurship program will train approximately 36 Atlanta EZ residents in asbestos removal, lead paint abatement, radon testing and water conservation.

But while EPA and EZ officials boast of Atlanta's creative environmental accomplishments, neighborhood leaders see things differently, despite the Empowerment Zone's nod to community participation. Bishop Murjan Rasheed has been involved with Atlanta's EZ since the application process began and currently sits on the Citizen Empowerment Advisory Board. But he isn't happy about the extent of the zone's environmental progress.

The Lakewood Heights neighborhood Rasheed hails from is another example of a low-income community where residents are well-aware of environmental issues: Neighbors have been working for years to clean up a waste-water treatment plant that generates complaints of foul odors, rashes and prolonged diarrhea among residents. As far as Rasheed is concerned, Empowerment Zone environmental efforts in his neighborhood amount to a drop of clean water in a contaminated bucket.

"Low-flow toilets, that might be a good situation, but we have more serious problems," Rasheed says. "When people are getting sick, a low-flow toilet is not one of my priorities." He notes that the odor emanating from the plant has affected a nearby school and has hurt business in an adjacent commercial district. Rasheed is involved in a campaign to shut down the waste-water treatment plant and alert local representatives to residents' health concerns. Overall, the EZ designation has been little help in the fight. "We can't get a dime from no one," he laments.

"A lot of these lower income communities are situated near other problems that sort of overwhelm the small environmental projects you can do under EZ/EC," acknowledges Jim Hanson, brownfields coordinator for EPA region 9 in San Francisco.

Although many larger environmental concerns will be left unaddressed by Empowerment Zones, some argue that inroads are being made. "I think that there's a lot of good news here," says Tregoning. "Not everything that's being done has an environmental emphasis, but I'm not aware of any lead smelters going up or anything else that's really dreadful. A lot of these projects have good environmental aspects."

More Information

• Buffalo Enterprise Development Corp., 620 Main St., Buffalo, NY 14202, (716) 842-6923
• EPA 401 M St. SW, Washington DC 20460, (202) 260-2778
• The Green Institute, 1433 E. Franklin, Ste. 7A, Minneapolis, MN 55404, (612) 874-1148
• CANDO, 343 S. Dearborn, Ste. 910, Chicago, IL 60604, (312) 939-7171, fax (312) 939-7236
• AEZC, 101 Marietta St., Ste. 1101, Atlanta, GA 30303, (404) 627-2332
• Renewal Atlanta, 352 University Ave., Atlanta, GA 30310-3630, (404) 755-6330

Reproducible Feature: How to Apply for the Next Round of EZ/EC Funding

Take Salem, Mo., an impoverished, rural town of 4,500. Despite losing its bid for EZ status in 1994, the Salem Area Community Betterment Association, whose board includes the mayor, the head of the chamber of commerce and an array of community representatives, decided to carry out its strategic plan without federal funding.

"The process [of designing a strategic plan] had caused us to come together and say, 'Here's what we can do,' " says Gerald W. Craig, the group's president. "The real success has been the total involvement of the community."

To date, Salem has attracted a number of badly needed infrastructure improvements: a $6 million natural gas installation, upgrades on the municipal sewer and water system, a network of fiber-optic cable to homes and businesses, repairs on the main highway and the construction of a new middle school.

Being a Champion Community has opened the door to other federal funding, Craig adds. Salem has received three federal grants to provide better community health services.

Similarly, in downstate Pulaski County, Ill., three towns stretched a small $13,850 state grant to buy new water pumps, outfit town parks with a summer softball diamond and move city hall into more modern headquarters.

Funding from the State of West Virginia helped the Barbour County Champion leverage $1.3 million in in-kind volunteer services as well as local monies to move forward with development plan goals. "Funding from the state kept the program visible," says Rosemary Wagner of the USDA Region 7 Planning and Development Council.

LAST SPRING at a Champion Communities conference in Little Rock, Ark., Norman Reid, director of USDA's Community Outreach Services, and Pat Montoya, a member of Clinton's Community Empowerment Board and a regional director of Health and Human Services, encouraged Champions to keep their programs visible. The conference advised communities to continue working on strategic development plans created during the EZ/EC application process. If Champions want to reapply for EZ/EC status, Reid and Montoya suggested reviewing original application plans: Were all angles covered? Was the plan comprehensive? Did it have a grassroots focus?

To guide Champions in redesigning their plans— and increasing their chances if and when a new round of EZ/EC funding is approved— Reid and Montoya offered several recommendations:

• Create a "real community." Some applicants on the first round of funding attempted to link partial census tracts together or even unconnected, impoverished areas that sometimes crossed state lines. "These are not communities," Reid says. "Define who you think you are as a community. Regard all boundaries as barriers to the approval of the application."
  
• Emphasize social and human services delivery. Some EZ/EC plans saw the need for job training programs but made no provision to establish day care services for the trainees. What good is it to train people for the job force when they cannot obtain good, affordable day care services so they can work?
  
• Determine if your strategic plan would be strengthened by incorporating new partners from within the community. Some applications were rejected in the first round of funding because strategic development plans were created largely by community leaders and officials. Did your proposal include input from all factions of the community, including low-income people?
  
• Maintain an emphasis on health by addressing environmental issues and medical care. "A healthy community is one that is clean and safe for all its residents," Montoya says. "There should be an interconnectedness of all these issues in your plan."
  
• Find out what projects will cost and get estimates, if possible. Identify funding alternatives. Get financial commitments from plan partners.
  
• Create benchmarks that will make your plan a reality. Design immediate "wins" and short-term successes. Identify realistic baselines and collectible data sources. If possible, locate successful models within EZ/EC communities.

To find out what other Champion Communities are doing, contact the HUD EZ/EC Task Force for urban areas at (202) 708-6339; rural areas may contact USDA at (202) 619-7980. Champions also can find funding possibilities on the Internet. Go to the National EZ/EC Program website: http://www.ezec.gov, then click on the "What's New" button on the menu screen. Notices of Funding Availability list new federal grant opportunities.

More Information

• Champion Communities Office, P.O. Box 3657, Fayetteville, AR 72702, (501) 442-9824, fax (501) 442-9842,
• Salem Area Community Betterment Association, P. O. Box 732, Salem, MO, 65560, (573) 729-6617.

Index

Editor's Note:A Work in Progress
Introduction: Open for Business
Services: Juggling Act
Economic Growth: Innovative Job Creation
Governance: Who Calls the Shots?
Case Study: Opportunity Lost
Environment: Growing Green Projects in Urban Zones
Profiles: All Over the Map

Back to Community Index